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There are devices that can eavesdrop on meetings and water cooler conversations to collect and mine data and suggest ways to improve productivity.

India Inc may still be catching up in this tracking game, but the West shows the way to where we are headed.

At one level, what India Bound does is routine. At another, it seems a bit Orwellian. India Bound is a niche consulting firm that manages security risks — ranging from compliance to governance to crisis — for its customers in sectors such as oil and gas, banking, information technology-enabled services and aviation.

Among the many things it offers is a travel tracker tool to keep a close watch on its clients’ executives who are on the move. It helps them be updated about executives’ locations, which airlines they are using, the hotels they are staying at and even the details of the cabs they are taking — right down to the details of the driver.

“Should something happen, we know exactly where they are, what’s going on and how to ensure their safety,” says Arpit Rajain, 43, vice-president (risk management), India Bound. The tracking extends to the virtual world, too. Web crawlers monitor the social media presence of the employees, to ensure there is no violation of the code of conduct and ethics.

Employee tracking goes a notch higher at Mettl. “So far, we have helped companies spot performance-enhancing behaviour among workers,” says Tonmoy Shingal, cofounder of the employee assessment firm. “Lately, we are getting a new kind of request.” Some schools, for instance, want to run Mettl’s artificial intelligence (AI)-based predictive tests on teachers and administrative staff to identify people with potential dark traits. In its beta phase, the AI tool marks candidates on six dark behavioural traits — self-obsession, opportunism, temperament, insensitivity, proclivity for thrill-seeking and impulsiveness — and slots them as green (safest), amber and red.

“We can predict staff with dark traits with up to 75% accuracy,” Shingal says. This helps companies screen potential recruits and weed out those in the red zone, who might cause trouble. “One bad apple can lead to bad press and uproar on social media.” Close to 60 firms, including 25 from outside India, have already signed up with Mettl, which was incorporated in 2010 and has over 2,500 customers in 90 countries, including TCS and Astra Zeneca.

These technologies are reviving memories of George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984. His dystopian state might not be a reality. But in the digital capitalist era, the employer might become Big Brother. The ways to keep tabs on employees have multiplied — wearable sensors, cameras, smartphones, laptops, emails and communication apps like Slack. If you are working on the company computer or using its Wi-Fi, your emails, Facebook posts, private chats and even keyboard strokes are all within reach of your employers. “Staff surveillance has been gaining momentum over the last few years,” says Jim Stroud, global head of sourcing and recruiting strategy, Randstad Sourceright.

India Inc may still be catching up in this tracking game, but the West shows the way to where we are headed. Early this year, Amazon got patents for a wristband that can track the movement of its warehouse workers. Last year, US-based tech startup Three Square Market offered to implant in its workers a $300 rice-grain sized microchip. The versatile chip, powered by near field communication, dispenses the need to have ID cards, passwords and even credit cards.

About 50 of 80 employees signed up. Another USbased company, Crossover, has launched a productivity tool called WorkSmart that takes pictures of employees through webcams every 10 minutes to know whether the staff are working or not.

The Swedish company ABB uses a productivity tool called FlowLight to evaluate how busy employees are, by measuring their combined mouse and keyboard activity. A light on the employee’s desk flashes red or green, informing colleagues if the person is distracted beyond a certain threshold. The idea is to curb distractions. Cad-Capture, a data management firm, has launched a device called OccupEye that uses heat and motion sensors to monitor the time employees spend at their desks.

A Boston-based startup, Humanyze, goes a step further. Its wearable device equipped with multiple sensors can track not just where you are, but also how you work, whom you meet, what you say and the tone and tenor of how you say it. “Earlier, we used these sensors to study how two people spoke to each other. And we could fairly accurately predict if they will go out on a date,” says Ben Waber, cofounder, Humanyze. Office-furniture maker Herman and Miller has a smart chair and desk that tracks and stores data on an employee’s posture and movements at the desk, including how long the person is at the desk.

Most of these companies say such devices are used to improve employee productivity and company performance. But the fact remains that a range of devices, including Apple Watch and Fitbit trackers, are now helping write a new chapter on employee tracking. It could open a can of worms. “There’s little good news here for the worker. Information is power. And in the workplace, that is all now concentrated in the hands of the employers,” says Tarun Wadhwa, visiting instructor, Carnegie Mellon University.

Creeping InvasionPrivacy, or the lack of it, made headlines last month, after Facebook said data of users was being used for predictive analyses, though users were not aware of it. The social media platform had to face public backlash and questions from regulators. The dangers of leaving too much unregulated data in the hands of digital giants like Facebook and Google have made governments, consumers and companies sit up and take note of an emerging risk. Policy wonks from the US to Europe have started deliberating on ways to tackle the problem. But under the radar, a bigger threat is lurking in another world that must be confronted and addressed.

“Unlike advertisers and digital platforms that collect data on consumers, the power dynamics in the employer-employee relationship is totally different,” says Waber. It is easier for a Facebook user to quit the platform over violation of privacy rights than for an employee to quit his job. “Employers have far greater control over employees’ data. We all have to set boundaries what can and cannot be done,” adds Waber.

For multiple reasons, workplace surveillance has reached a tipping point. Creeping invasion has over the past few decades slowly normalised an almost Orwellian-like world in offices. “Low-wage workers — from factories to retail outlets — are vulnerable. They are canaries in a coal mine for changes that are washing over the rest of the workforce,” says US-based Julia Ticona, a postdoctoral scholar at Data & Society research institute.

“For workers who are used to more autonomy and control over their work, this can give a feeling of being constrained and demeaning. But in reality, these changes have long been taking place for those working at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. Now we are seeing a trickle-up effect of monitoring and surveillance.”

What started innocuously with smart identity cards and CCTVs has now become a web of gadgets and services that employers can use to trace the digital breadcrumbs of their staff. The big shift is that today’s sophisticated digital tools have widened the surveillance scanner to now include well-paid white-collar workers, too. Another factor is that inexpensive monitoring technologies have given employers access to data on an unprecedented scale. Internet of things (IoT)-powered gear can help track the wearer and also give insights into many aspects of their life, including their health status and workout schedules.

Data in itself may not mean much, but sophisticated AI tools can help employers make intelligent sense of such data. As a result, companies not only know what is going on right now, but can also predict what might happen in the future. Companies like Google, for example, say they can accurately predict when an employee is likely to quit. The implications are far-reaching. The way such information can be used throws up significant privacy and other concerns. “Data is collected, centralised and used for one-way decision making by the employer,” says Wadhwa.

“There are significant risks for workers because of emerging digitalised management methods,” says Phoebe V Moore, associate professor of political economy & technology, University of Leicester School of Business. “With the emergence of data-driven decision making, workers experience higher pressure and face the risk of physical and psychological violence of a digitalised workplace.” Such an asymmetrical employeremployee relationship is shattering the equilibrium in the labour market.

And this is happening when the labour dynamics in the job market are changing, again due to technology. Automation is making certain job profiles redundant and creating new ones. The growing gig economy, led by the Ubers and Airbnbs of the world, is reshaping the employer-employee relationship. Full-time on-roll workers are passé, as technology removes geographical barriers. Several companies are increasingly using freelancers to work on project-based contracts. The implications of rising worker surveillance must be seen in this context, too.

Factoring in the UpsideThere are important reasons why employee monitoring has become a necessity in today’s era. “Corporate executives are often working with highly sensitive internal and client-specific data,” says Chaitali Mukherjee, lead (people & organisation), PwC India. “With high cyber security, regulatory and compliance risks, it is necessary that companies put in proactive strategies to manage these.” In the era of WikiLeaks, when confidential information could be made public easily, it has become both critical and challenging for companies to keep a constant vigil.

Employee monitoring can be advantageous on the productive front, too, say experts. “One interesting area of workforce analytics is the ability to track successful behaviour at work. It can also help spot patterns of unconscious bias, like people collaborating with only men or expats,” says US-based Barney Loehnis, who till recently led the digital transformation at HR consulting firm Mercer.

Humanyze’s sensor-based wearable device, for example, eavesdrops on meetings and water cooler conversations to collect and mine data and suggest ways to improve productivity. “Data, coupled with artificial intelligence, will become central to identifying apt role allocations within organisations,” says Kamal Karanth, cofounder of specialist staffing firm Xpheno. IoT wearables can also help improve worker safety. SmartCap Technologies of Australia offers a fatigue-monitoring solution that can detect microsleep in, say, truck drivers, which can ensure they don’t fall asleep at the wheel.

A smart safety helmet for mining workers can capture ambient air data and the miners’ health, and alert companies and workers of possible risks. A new pair of smart safety shoes developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology vibrates if a worker lifts an object beyond a recommended weight. Big data and AI tools are also reshaping the recruitment industry. Recruiters can now cast their net wider and look at the profiles of thousands of candidates faster and narrow down suitable ones more accurately.

“We have shortened the (recruitment) timeline while improving a candidate’s relevance,” says Anand Baranwal, cofounder of Skillate, part of the SAP Labs incubator programme. US-based startup Interviewed, which was acquired by job platform Indeed, has an AI tool that constructs a candidate’s psychological profile and vets his “cultural fit”. The AI platform of another startup, HireVue, analyses a candidate’s facial expressions, choice of words, voice inflexion and micro gestures during an interview to assess his suitability.

Drawing BoundariesIn the age of big data, the measure-everything mindset is here to stay; there is a tendency to hoard data. But this has to be done responsibly and with some thought about the consequences. “My concern is that in the age of increased employer-employee disconnect, this heightened monitoring could backfire on the engagement front,” says Xpheno’s Karanth. In fact, a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review on the impact of staff surveillance at the US Transportation Security Administration found that constant monitoring affected performance.

“My biggest concern is too many corporate decisions get made with a cost/benefit analysis rather than a right/wrong analysis,” says Amarpreet Kalkat, cofounder of Frrole. The Palo Alto-based hiring and marketing analytics company deals with a lot of personal data and claims to handle the information responsibly. “While almost all of it is public-personal (personal data that’s in the public domain, like on Twitter) data, we still go out of our way to ensure that we do not even store any data that can cause serious privacy issues in case of a breach,” claims Kalkat.

Companies work hard to address privacy concerns of their customers. They must adopt a similar approach for their staff, too. “Making employees aware of what, how and when companies can collect, process and share their data is of utmost significance,” says Nishchae Suri, partner, KPMG Academy. “Reasonability and awareness of workplace surveillance are two important pillars in this regard.”

New York-headquartered Mentis Software’s business is to discover, monitor, protect, mask and retire data for its clients. “We help our clients anonymise and mask data and restrict access where required,” says Suresh Sundaram, executive director, Mentis Software. Finally, the government and regulators should set boundaries. “While policy formulated by governments usually tends to be too little too late, and too stifling, it can still act as the lowest common denominator in scenarios where organisations fail to act morally,” says Kalkat.

The European Union is showing the way in this regard. Its General Data Protection Regulation comes into force on May 25, triggered by the “unprecedented concerns surrounding the accumulation and lifetime of data and people’s rights to that data and privacy,” says Moore of the University of Leicester School of Business. In the march of data analytics, history should not be forgotten.

A century ago, Ford Motors offered generous wages and social benefits to its workers. In return, the employees had to deal with a team of investigators who would probe every aspect of their life, like spending habits, alcohol consumption, house cleanliness and marital status. The experiment had to be abandoned because of workers’ resentment. As Ford’s idea gets a 21st century makeover, employers must draw a few lessons from the past.

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